Regional and Interregional Interactions in Europe, North America and across the North Atlantic

If we figured regionalism as a continuum from rudimental regional interaction to very sophisticated forms of it, Europe stands on this latter end while North America barely makes it to the middle point. The imbalance in the degree of regionalization on the two northern shores of the Atlantic explains the non-existent region-to-region interaction. Interregionalism has thus little to say about Europe and North America, although ‘quasi-interregionalism’ (i.e. country-region relations) has here some of its most advanced manifestations. The case of US-Europe relations actually goes beyond quasi-interregionalism and displays traits that are more characteristic of regionalism than anything else. A comparison of regionalism in Europe and North America is therefore invariably destined to be an exercise involving a third, bicontinental region: the West.

Paper produced within the framework of the Atlantic Future project, November 2015. Publ. in Frank Mattheis and Andréas Litsegård (eds.), Interregionalism across the Atlantic Space, Cham, Springer, 2017 (c2018), p. 131-147 (United Nations University Series on Regionalism ; 15), ISBN 978-3-319-62907-0; 978-3-319-62908-7 (ebk); DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-62908-7.